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Equity
Admissions Policies, Cohort Composition, and Academic Success: Evidence from California
I study how postsecondary admission policies affect the composition and subsequent academic outcomes of new cohorts. I leverage the staggered replacement of lotteries and waitlists at California's community college nursing programs with admissions that rely on grades, work experience, and other… more →
Equity- oriented accountability for charter schools: Lessons from Massachusetts
Topics: School ChoiceTags: Charter schools, EquityBecause of the many special characteristics of charter schools, policy makers who aim to promote a system of charters schools that ensures fair access to, and fair treatment of, disadvantaged students will need a public accountability system oriented, at least in part, to equity concerns.… more →
Identifying and Producing Effective Teachers
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeachers are among the most important school-provided determinants of student success. Effective teachers improve students’ test scores as well as their attendance, behavior, and earnings as adults. However, students do not enjoy equal access to effective teachers. This article reviews some of… more →
Achievement Gaps in the Wake of COVID-19
Topics: Student LearningA survey targeting education researchers conducted in November, 2020 provides both short- and longer-term predictions of how much achievement gaps between low- and high-income students in U.S elementary schools will change as a result of COVID-related disruptions to schooling and family life.… more →
Uniform Admissions, Unequal Access: Did the Top 10% Plan Increase Access to Selective Flagship Institutions?
The Top 10% Plan admissions policy has now been in place in Texas for over two decades. We analyze 18 years of post-Top 10% Plan data to look for evidence of increased access to the selective Texas flagship campuses among all Texas high schools. We provide a detailed description of changes in… more →
The Segregation of Students by Income in Public Schools
Topics: Families and CommunitiesOver the past three decades, children from low-income families and those from more affluent families have increasingly been attending different public schools. While recent work has helped us understand patterns of income segregation between districts and schools within districts, we know very… more →
The Effect of Charter Schools on School Segregation
Topics: School ChoiceWe conduct a comprehensive examination of the causal effect of charter schools on school segregation, using a triple differences design that utilizes between-grade differences in charter expansion within school systems, and an instrumental variable approach that leverages charter school opening… more →
Dual Identification? The Effects of EL Status on SPED Placement in an Equity-Focused District
Topics: Student LearningThis study examines the effects of English Learner (EL) status on subsequent Special Education (SPED) placement. Through a research-practice partnership, we link student demographic data and initial English proficiency assessment data across seven cohorts of test takers and observe EL and SPED… more →
Are Power Plant Closures a Breath of Fresh Air? Local Air Quality and School Absences
Topics: Families and CommunitiesIn this paper we study the effects of three large, nearly-simultaneous coal-fired power plant closures on school absences in Chicago. We find that the closures resulted in a 7 percent reduction in absenteeism in nearby schools relative to those farther away following the closures. For the… more →
Comprehensive Support and Student Success: Can Out of School Time Make a Difference?
StudentU is a comprehensive program that provides education, nutrition, and social support services to disadvantaged students outside of the regular school day. In this paper I investigate the effects of this multi-year program on the early high school outcomes of participating students by… more →
Examining STEM Performance within a Comprehensive College Transition Program
We examine the impact of the Thompson Scholars Learning Community (TSLC), a comprehensive college transition program serving students with a variety of majors, on students’ science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)-related outcomes. We use an explanatory mixed-methods design, which… more →
Incentivizing Equity? The Effects of Performance-Based Funding on Race-Based Gaps in College Completion
Performance-based funding models for higher education, which tie state support for institutions to performance on student outcomes, have proliferated in recent decades. Some states have designed these policies to also address educational attainment gaps by including bonus payments for… more →
Ordinal Approaches to Decomposing Between-group Test Score Disparities
Topics: MethodsTags: Assessment, EquityThe estimation of test score “gaps” and gap trends plays an important role in monitoring educational inequality. Researchers decompose gaps and gap changes into within- and between-school portions to generate evidence on the role schools play in shaping these inequalities. However, existing… more →
Racial Disparities in Pre-K Quality: Evidence from New York City’s Universal Pre-K Program
Topics: Student LearningNew York City’s universal pre-kindergarten program, which increased full-day enrollment from 19,000 to almost 70,000 children, is ambitious in both scale and implementation speed. We provide new evidence on the distribution of pre-K quality in NYC by student race/ethnicity, and investigate the… more →
Can Greater Access to Education Be Inequitable? New Evidence from India's Right to Education Act
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceIndia took a decisive step toward universal basic education by proclaiming a constitutionally-guaranteed Right to Education (RTE) Act in 2009 that called for full access of children aged 6-14 to free schooling. This paper considers the offsetting effects to RTE from induced expansion of private… more →
How Does Minority Political Representation Affect School District Administration and Student Outcomes?
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceWe employ a regression discontinuity design leveraging close school board elections to investigate how the racial and ethnic composition of California school boards affects school district administration and student achievement. We find some evidence that increases in minority representation… more →
Experimental Effects of “Achievement Gap” News Reporting on Viewers’ Racial Stereotypes, Inequality Explanations, and Inequality Prioritization
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe “achievement gap” has long dominated mainstream conversations about race and education.
School Segregation At The Classroom Level In A Southern 'New Destination' State
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceUsing detailed administrative data for public schools, we document racial and ethnic segregation at the classroom level in North Carolina, a state that has experienced a sharp increase in Hispanic enrollment. We decompose classroom-level segregation in counties into within-school and between-… more →
Does the Common Core Have a Common Effect?: An Exploration of Effects on Academically Vulnerable Students
Tags: Assessment, EquityPolicymakers have sought to increase the rigor of content standards since the 1990s. However, the literature examining the effects of reforms to content standards on student outcomes is still developing. This study examines the extent to which the Common Core State Content Standards (CC)… more →
Unequal Pay for Equal Work? Unpacking the Gender Gap in Principal Compensation
We investigate the male–female gap in principal compensation in state and national data: detailed longitudinal personnel records from the state of Missouri and repeated cross-sections from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). In both data sets, we estimate… more →